


pleased as man with man to dwell

by reinetta



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Cats, Christmas, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff and Smut, James In A Dress, M/M, literal fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:42:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28368588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reinetta/pseuds/reinetta
Summary: Since then, James and the cat had been fast friends, having in common a love of warmth and comfort, of fastidious cleanliness, and of arranging themselves into artful positions on various articles of furniture. Francis loved James, and tolerated the cat which, in its turn, seemed to find Francis amusing, in a way that Francis did not understand.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/James Fitzjames
Comments: 52
Kudos: 109





	pleased as man with man to dwell

Francis stumbled into the morning room, leaving Matilda to deal with the cumbersome object he had dragged up the front steps and into the hall. Brushing himself down, he began, “James, I—oh, for heaven’s sake.”

Two pairs of tawny eyes turned to stare at him, blinking in slow surprise. One pair, lightly spotted and ringed with green, belonged to James, who was taking a leisurely breakfast. The other, bright as beads of glass, belonged to a large striped tomcat which sat brazenly upon the tablecloth, eyeing James’ half-finished plate of kedgeree. At Francis’ entrance, it had lifted its nose from the silver milk jug, and was now making a great show of innocence, cleaning its face with a round brown paw. 

The cat had arrived in November: a bedraggled, dust-coloured thing at the back door which Matilda had — foolishly, in Francis’ opinion, but then she was a very honest and trusting young person — allowed inside to dry itself before the kitchen range. Francis, wondering that morning where everyone and his breakfast had got to, stuck his head into the kitchen to find Captain James Fitzjames, late of Her Majesty’s Discovery Service, sitting cross-legged on the flagstoned floor with their maid-of-all-work perched on her knees beside him, the pair of them engrossed in the task of inducing a scrawny-looking alley cat to drink warmed milk from a saucer.

Since then, James and the cat had been fast friends, having in common a love of warmth and comfort, of fastidious cleanliness, and of arranging themselves into artful positions on various articles of furniture. Francis loved James, and tolerated the cat which, in its turn, seemed to find Francis amusing, in a way that Francis did not understand. 

“I wish you wouldn’t let that thing onto the table, James.” Francis crossed the room, laid a hand on James’ shoulder, and frowned at the cat, who stared insolently back.

“I wanted company,” said James, reaching up distractedly to stroke Francis’ hair. “Where have you been, so early in the morning?”

“Come and see.” Francis took James’ hand and pulled him upright, leaning over as he did so to shoo the cat off the table and onto the floor. 

“You must be kind to Pantheras,” said James, twitching a corner of his mouth. 

“What sort of a name is that for the poor animal? He’s supposed to be a mouser, not a lap-cat.”

“You seemed quite content to have him on your lap last night.”

“Only under great duress,” said Francis. “He kept looking at me.”

James draped his long arms about Francis’ neck. “You’re rather nice to look at,” he said, and kissed Francis, tasting of tea. Drawing back, he said, “Is it a very large Christmas tree?” 

“No, I thought it would—” Francis stared at him. “Dammit, James, how on earth did you know?” 

James beamed at him, sliding his hands from the back of Francis’ head to the shoulders of his coat. “My love, you’re covered in pine needles. You look like a porcupine.”

It was not, in fact, a very large Christmas tree: small enough for Francis to carry home from Covent Garden over his shoulder with only the mildest twinge in the small of his back. Matilda hovered with a dustpan and brush while Francis wrestled it onto a table in the drawing room, which sat draped and waiting under a swathe of copper-coloured chenille. James was content to watch, smirking slightly, until the tree lurched dangerously towards the mantelpiece and he darted forwards to help right it again. Pantheras watched with some scepticism from the windowsill, flicking the tip of his tail. Once Matilda and her brush had gone away he dropped onto the carpet and sniffed at the chenille where it touched the floor, before stalking from the room on some unknown business of his own.

“That creature’s getting terribly round about the middle,” Francis remarked, watching the cat saunter away. 

“He’s well-fed and taken care of,” said James. “Don’t you remember how bony he was when he arrived?”

“Mm,” said Francis, winding an arm around James’ waist, thinking not of the cat but of James when he stepped at last onto English soil — how thin he had been, how worn by hunger and walking, how tired. Something hard and painful rose into Francis’ throat, and he pressed a kiss to James’ left temple. “Do you like it, my dear?”

“Oh, _yes_ ,” James breathed. “Yes, Francis, I do.”

They spent their evening by the fireside, Francis rather distracted from the periodical he was reading by the shifting shades of chestnut that the candles on the newly-illuminated tree brought out in James’ hair. By the time they retired for bed, the colour had risen so much in James’ sallow cheeks that Francis could not help but kiss them one by one, feeling their warmth under his lips, pulling James against him, pinning him firmly against the panelling at the head of the stairs. 

“Shall I have you here?” he murmured, getting a hand between them and delighting at the sound of James’ gasping breath. “Up against the wall like a harlot, hm?”

James let out a little moan. “We mustn’t. What if Matilda were to hear?”

“Matilda spent most of the summer making sheep’s eyes at the tall parlourmaid next door,” grunted Francis, applying himself to the fastenings of James’ trousers. “She can’t possibly mind about us — besides, she must have noticed your bed has been empty for a year.”

“I ought to stop untidying it every morning,” said James, “and save her the trouble of—oh Christ, _Francis_.” 

Francis wrestled open the bedroom door and pushed James backwards through it, the two of them still tangled up together. James wriggled out of his trousers and kissed Francis deeply, his warm fingers framing Francis’ face. Francis got a hand up underneath his shirt, finding his narrow hips, his solid waist, the heat at the small of his back; with his other hand he stroked between James’ legs, at the peach-furred softness there, the gathering slickness against his thigh.

But James pulled away from him, grinning, tugging his shirt over his head. Francis closed the door and followed him across the room, stripping perfunctorily out of his trousers and coming to rest against James’ back, pressed close from knee to chin, kissing the faintly sweaty spot at the roots of his hair. 

“Oh, Francis.”

“Yes, James.” Francis mouthed at the uppermost knob of his spine, his shoulder blade. “On your knees for me, my love — on you go.”

“We can’t, darling.”

“What?”

“We _can’t_.” James unwound Francis’ arms from around his waist, and gestured towards the bed.

In the centre of the red wool coverlet, making a dent in the winter bedclothes that resembled a crater of the moon, lay Pantheras, tightly curled into a ball. 

“Oh, for heaven’s _sake_ , James.”

“He’s asleep!”

“He spends most of his life asleep,” Francis growled. He put his forehead against James’ bony shoulder and sighed.

“But he looks so peaceful,” said James wistfully. “There’s always the hearthrug,” he added with a suggestive smile, leading Francis by the hand towards the fireplace. “A nice warm fire in the grate.”

“I’m far too old to be larking about on the floor,” muttered Francis. “And so are you, if it comes to that.”

“Nonsense,” said James. “Let’s pretend we’re young again.”

It was all very well pretending to be young, thought Francis, as long as the rest of one’s body was in on the joke. On their eventual return to bed, he and James had arranged themselves around the interloping cat, and Francis was profoundly regretting the crooked, half-moon position he’d been forced to adopt.

There had been no sign of Pantheras when they awoke next morning — not that Francis was looking, of course. He merely happened to notice the lack of an impertinent weight burrowed between them in the sheets, the absence of an inveigling presence at the breakfast table, the silence in the kitchen where normally there came a cacophony of hungry, disgruntled miaows. He had ventured downstairs on entirely another matter, quite a coincidence, and the subject of the cat had merely happened to come up; Matilda had not seen him, but she looked worried, and put a dish of leftover kippers out on the back step.

It was snowing heavily, and after breakfast Francis stood at the drawing room window looking down into the street. There was a rustle of paper from beside the fireplace, and the sound of James clearing his throat. Half a minute later there came a snorting sort of laugh.

“He’ll be quite all right, Francis.”

“Hm?”

“The cat. I know you’re worried.”

“I’m not worried,” Francis scoffed. He turned from the window and hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets. 

“Oh no,” said James, smirking unaccountably over the top of his newspaper, “of course you’re not. I see that now.”

“I was looking at the snow,” said Francis stoutly. “That’s all.” 

Three days went by with neither sight nor sound of Pantheras. Even James’ sangfroid began to pall, and he took to sitting on the upholstered drawing room windowsill, his breath misting the frozen glass. On more than one occasion Francis spotted him in serious conference with Matilda, dark head and white cap bent close together in the hallway or on the back stairs, though Matilda would bustle away when Francis approached. The absence in their bed seemed to grow, no matter how James curled closer and closer on each gradually colder night.

On Christmas Eve they walked to St. Martin’s for midnight mass, and crunched home again through the snow, barely speaking. Francis let them in with the latch key and helped James out of his overcoat and hat. Matilda had gone to stay with an aunt in Whitechapel until the new year, there being a new baby born at Deptford and one too many mouths to feed.

“Hot cocoa,” said Francis firmly, squeezing James’ forearm, which felt cold even through his fine green wool. James nodded, and drifted away towards the drawing room.

In the kitchen Francis glumly heated milk and water, reached to the back of a cupboard for the bottle Matilda kept hidden away and filled two cups, adding a tot of rum for James. Climbing wearily up into the hall, he heard a cry from the drawing room.

“Francis?” James’ voice was tremulous, and then triumphant: “Francis!”

“James?” Francis hurried towards the sound, cups rattling, cocoa slopping into the saucers. 

He elbowed open the drawing room door, searching for James at the window, or in his armchair by the fire. But James was on the floor before the table which held the Christmas tree, holding the edge of the tablecloth in one hand and bending forward, a lock of hair falling in his face. At the sound of Francis setting down the cups, he looked up, eyes dark and shining. 

“Francis,” he said again.

Francis went to his knees at James’ side. Under the table, in a nest of newspaper, was Pantheras, surrounded by five small, squirming kittens. They looked like fledgling birds, or eels in a fishmonger’s window: their eyes tightly closed, their ears pressed flat against their heads, climbing helplessly over each other to suckle from their mother. Their _mother_ — Pantheras _._

“James,” said Francis. “I thought he was a—” 

“So did I.”

“I just _assumed_ —” 

“Yes.”

“Not that it matters,” said Francis.

“No, of course not,” said James. “Except—” 

“Kittens,” said Francis, his voice catching.

“ _Kittens_ ,” said James, beaming. Francis smiled back at him, feeling a curious dampness in his eyes. “Oh my darling,” James laughed, thumbing at the sudden, spilling tear on Francis’ cheek. “You lovely fool.”

“I’m just so pleased.” Francis reached under the table to touch Pantheras’ head. The cat ignored him, busy licking the smallest of the kittens clean; it was still wet and rather slimy, and let out a tiny yelping mew, the sound like a wheeling bird far out at sea. “Five, James — five!”

“Yes, Francis, I have counted.”

“There’s a roguish ginger tom roaming the streets somewhere,” Francis remarked, for the kittens ranged from marmalade orange to brownish-grey and striped, spotted here and there with white. 

“Imagine that,” said James, running a hand through Francis’ hair. “Whoever heard of such a thing?”

Later, as they lay in bed, James turned in Francis’ arms and said, “Ought we change her name, do you think?”

“Whose?”

James prodded him in the ribs with a pointed elbow. “The _cat_. Pantheras.”

“I don’t see why,” said Francis with a yawn. “It’s still the same cat.”

James was silent for a minute or two, letting Francis stroke his hair. “And you don’t mind, do you?” he said at length.

“Mind?” 

“That she’s… not what you expected,” said James quietly.

“James.” Francis shifted to look at him. 

“Oh, Francis, don’t.”

“ _James._ ” Francis kissed his forehead and the tip of his nose, kissed the furrows in James’ cheeks, kissed each downturned corner of his mouth. “She’s still the same cat,” he said again. “I’m very fond of her.”

“I knew you were really,” said James with a wan smile. “You’re never half as irascible as you pretend to be.”

“I’m very fond of you, too.” Francis kissed James properly, opening him up with teeth and tongue. “When you’re not talking.” 

“How dare you,” said James lazily, dropping his head back onto the pillow as Francis bit the skin across his collarbones. “Everything I have to say is terribly important.”

“Hush,” said Francis, kneading at James’ chest over his nightshirt, sliding down to suck his stiffening nipples through the linen. “Be a good girl, now, hm?”

“Oh, _yes_ , Francis.” James reached for Francis’ hand and closed his own around it. “I will—I will.”

Matilda, returning at new year to the sight of Pantheras and her younglings before the drawing room fire, burst into such sudden and extremely noisy tears that James had to offer her his handkerchief and help her into a chair, where Francis patted her hand in what he hoped was a soothing manner. At length James slid onto the floor and passed kitten after kitten up to her, until her skirts were swarming with them: still-blind, helpless little things, waving their tiny rose-pink paws. 

“We shall have to call them something, I suppose,” said Francis, once Matilda had gone, tearful but smiling, back to the kitchen and the kittens were asleep again beneath the Christmas tree. Francis had hooked back a corner of the tablecloth so they could come and go as they pleased, and sacrificed one of his old ganseys to make their nest a little warmer. 

“The reddish one would make an excellent Terror,” said James, a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Animated by some of the same spirit as her captain, I should say — did you see him trying to climb my trouser leg?”

“The greyest one should be Erebus, in that case,” said Francis. He and James exchanged a mutually dubious look. “No, perhaps not.”

“Hecla is rather better,” said James. 

“Acheron?”

“Aetna for one of the girls — if they are girls, that is.” said James. 

“Fury,” suggested Francis. “For the brindled one that wriggles faster than the others.”

“A fleet of little bomb ships,” said James with a smile. 

“Small explorers.”

“They’ll tear the house to shreds.”

“Let them,” Francis sighed, pulling James up from the floor and onto the sofa at his side. “We’ve lived through—oof.” James’ not-inconsiderable weight came to rest half across his lap. 

“We can keep them, can’t we?” 

“I don’t see why not,” said Francis. “Though they will grow, you know.”

“I _know_.”

“I wonder if six full-grown cats is rather too many for a single household.”

“Two apiece,” said James sleepily, burrowing his face into Francis’ collar.

“Well, that sounds perfectly reasonable.”

“I thought so,” said James, and Francis could hear the smile in his voice, even though he couldn’t see it. “I’m so glad we agree.”

One day in late January, Francis woke dazedly from an afternoon nap to find his bed — which had contained at least four or five additional occupants before he went to sleep — quite empty. He pulled on a dressing gown over his clothes and wandered down to the kitchen, tore a hunk of bread from the loaf on the sideboard and ate it contemplatively, looking about him at the comfortable chairs and the basket of newspapers which sat by the gently smouldering range. 

James was sitting on the sofa in the drawing room, wearing a cobalt-coloured day dress with wide pagoda sleeves. He smiled vaguely as Francis came in, looking up from his book, and tossed a curl of hair out of his eyes. The armchairs by the mantelpiece were empty, and the hearthrug was bare, a slow fire glowing in the grate. 

Francis went into the study, where the last rays of sunlight were streaming uninterrupted across the floor. There was nothing but a cobweb in the kneehole of his desk, and nothing on the well-worn leather seat of the chair.

“James?”

“Mm.”

“James.” Francis went back into the drawing room.

James spoke without looking up. “What?”

“Have you—oh never mind.” Francis began a circuit of the furniture, looking surreptitiously behind the lacquered cabinet and the mahogany bookcase. He strolled out into the hall and along to the morning room, peering underneath the breakfast table, then opened the cupboard under the stairs, still not finding what he sought. 

Rather more hastily than he had descended, he climbed to the upper floor and went back into his bedroom; overheated now, and encumbered by his dressing gown, he tore it off and threw it onto the bed, before bending to check beneath it. He crossed the landing into James’ room, which was cold and felt unoccupied, though the wardrobe door was standing ajar. Francis knelt before it, searching among the frilled hems and the polished boots, pushing the lid off a hat box and to find nothing save an old shirt of his own, folded carefully into a square. 

He hurried back downstairs again and burst into the drawing room. “James, I can’t find them.”

James stared at him in mild surprise. “Can’t find who?”

“The kittens — and Pantheras. They’re not anywhere in the house, and I thought—”

“Come here,” said James gently.

“What?”

“Come here,” James said again, and he laid down his book and took the skirt of his dress in one long hand, lifting it carefully from the floor.

Around his stockinged feet lay Pantheras and her kittens in a tangled pile, each at various stages of wakefulness, roused by the sudden brightness and the draught.

“Oh, for the love of Christ,” Francis choked, and he went to his knees at James’ side, hiding his face among his skirts. 

“Dear heart,” said James fondly, though with a note of poorly-concealed amusement in his voice, “you are a very loving, profoundly foolish man.” 

“I know,” Francis groaned, muffling the sound in James’ petticoats. “I—ouch!” 

Hecla had emerged from her hiding place and put ten needle-sharp claws into Francis’ knee. Terror, not to be outdone, leaped into his lap and made a bid for his watch chain, which was glinting in the firelight. 

“James,” said Francis, wiping his eyes with one cuff as Aetna began to climb his other, unattended sleeve. “James, you must help me.”

James’ mouth twitched, and he bent gracefully sideways to swoop Pantheras up onto his lap. “I think he can manage by himself for a moment, don’t you?” he said, scratching the purring creature behind her ears. 

Francis, beyond all hope of assistance, surrendered. He sprawled flat on his back across the hearthrug and let himself be mauled: Acheron making a splay-legged pounce onto his stomach and Fury — who after a strong headstart had grown into the meekest and gentlest of all his siblings — placidly licking his ear. Terror, with no such compunction, abandoned Francis’ watch chain and began instead to gnaw his finger; Hecla and Acheron were scuffling together across his stomach, tumbling off and clambering back again, as though Francis was nothing more than a conveniently cotton-covered hillock.

Someone began to chew his beard and he lifted the culprit off and held it aloft. Aetna squirmed and writhed, waving her spindly limbs and her too-large paws. 

“When did you get so big?” he asked her sternly, “And so _insolent?_ ”

“She must take after her father,” said James, smiling down at him.

“The red-headed rogue,” said Francis, as Terror jumped onto his chest and began chewing a button of his shirt. “He has a great deal to answer for. Take pity, James,” he pleaded, as Fury made a brave sortie into his hair. “Save me.”

James slid Pantheras carefully onto a cushion and folded himself onto the floor.

“Your dress, darling—”

“Hush.” James leaned over Francis and kissed him on the forehead, disentangling Fury from his hair, and Terror from under his chin. He unustuck Aetna and Acheron’s pinprick claws, and rescued Hecla, who had fallen down between Francis’ knees. “There,” said James, smoothing his hands over Francis’ pockmarked shirt. “Saved.”

Francis struggled upright against the legs of the armchair. Jamesʼ vacated sofa was a cat’s cradle of whiskers and tails; Pantheras had pinned her nearest kitten down and was giving it a thorough, determined wash. 

“Why is it,” he said, tucking a lock of James’ hair behind his ear, “that they’re on the furniture and we’re on the floor?”

“That was your idea, if you recall,” said James, twitching his mouth again, and arranging his skirts more neatly on the carpet.

“Do you know that upstairs there are two empty beds, entirely unoccupied by cats?” said Francis, putting a hand to the side of Jamesʼ face. 

“Are there, indeed?” said James, turning his head and pressing his lips to Francisʼ palm. “Youʼve made a thorough reconnoitre, have you? How peculiar.” 

“Iʼm a very peculiar man — foolish, I think you said.” 

“Loving,” said James, kissing Francis softly and deliberately. “I rather think _loving_ was the word I used.” 

  
  
  



End file.
